Balamma was an integral part of our life as far as I remember. She had been employed in our house seven years before I was born to take care of a newborn as my mother had contracted small pox and it was believed she might not survive.
Balamma stayed on to see the birth of five more of us.
When our father decided to move us to Hyderabad
Balamma must have been as old as our mother, but as far as I can remember she was always toothless. She did not have a single tooth and till this day I don’t know how she lost them!
We called her “old woman” whenever we were angry with her and she resented it no end. She took care of us for so long that we never knew what it was to be without her. Balamma, I realize now, was one of the greatest influences on me.
She got us addicted to tea and made us hate cabbage and French beans because she cooked no other vegetable as they were her favourites. She had a huge repertoire of rustic, wise, witty, pithy sayings for every situation in a day. I now use them unashamedly to impress people. Interestingly, enough, she never used an abuse word.
Balamma’s poverty, the tales of deprivation of her family, her saving and scrounging of every paisa that she would faithfully send to her daughter and her seven children, all left a deep impact on my tender mind. She became my friend during my late teens when she accepted me as an equal. Later on, it was cemented when I was the only one left behind as other siblings either found their calling, or had married and left home. She was protective like a mother hen of her brood. She would hover around whenever guys dropped in for a chat, giving enough evidence of her presence just in case they harboured unholy thoughts!
If girls came over she would spoil them no end, feeding them, chatting them up despite being a woman of few words. If I was late in returning from college she would keep a vigil at the gate and tell anyone who cared to ask why, that I was late. She would remain at her post till I appeared in the lane, and would go in once assured that I was safe and sound. She rarely went to any neighbour’s house. She never gossiped though she was alone for most of the day. I suspect she avoided the other maids’ company as she felt superior.
Our special relationship was cemented by several things. I would readily go to buy vegetables or milk in the morning to save her the effort. I would write letters for her to her family in the village. I knew the names of all her grandchildren and even motivated her to send the younger ones to school. She loved Telugu film songs and the Sunday afternoon’s Telugu film that was played on the radio, then our only source of entertainment at home. I would invariably tune in to her favourite programmes and we even saw several films together. Balamma spent part of her earnings on only two things: Telugu films and her day’s quota of paan and betel nut. Her affair with movies began when first the silent cinema and later the talkies were brought to Nizamabad, my home town, by my entrepreneur-father. Balamma would go for the night show stealthily so that my grandfather, who ruled the household with a stick, would not get to know of it. But, he had several spies in his employ and he knew exactly how many films Balamma saw, which was every single one that was released in the single tent-cinema in the town. He was so disapproving of her ‘profligacy’ that he berated her, saying she would even sell her clothes to indulge herself, a prediction that, fortunately, did not come true.
Balamma’s favourite film was “Keelu Gurram” a fantasy film in Telugu about a magical horse. Balamma saw this movie a dozen times and could reproduce the story, frame by frame! Whenever Noor Jehan’s songs from ‘Badi Bahen’ were played on Radio Ceylon Pakistan
Not always was our relationship so special. As a child I remember her bullying and terrorizing us. Even her visiting grandson also, older to me by a few years, having quickly gauged the situation, would bully us. We later discovered that Balamma terrorized her grandchildren too. And she also ensured they did not misbehave in our house. Balamma was a widow and had a daughter who lived in Aakaram village in the backward, dry, poverty-stricken district of Medak with a huge brood of children. They were desperately poor and Balamma would send her entire salary –a princely sum of Rs 20—to her daughter by money order once in a couple of months. Or, she would keep the money aside in a battered tin truck, which she would take with her during the annual visit she paid her daughter. She would also hoard the discarded clothes that my mother might decide to give. She had a fancy for wall calendars and would keep them safely after we were done with them with the ending of the year. She said she put them up in her daughter’s thatched hut.
Balamma was my mother’s confidante too. Not only would my mother share her woes with Balamma, but also leave her jewellery with her for safekeeping. She was given the monthly expenses to run the house. As far as I remember she did not misuse money or waste food. She would eat only twice a day, as was her habit for long, and she would never discard the leftovers. She would eat even spoilt food and no protests of ours would dissuade her. Her conditioning to scarce food was so deeply ingrained that even when food was available in plenty she refused to waste it. The poverty of Balamma’s family deeply affected me.
Whenever one of Balamma’s grandsons would visit her and as they were our age, we children would play together. I still remember the stories they told of their life. Their main food was gruel, or rotis made from maize or jowar flour. These rotis were eaten with thin tamarind extract mixed with salt and chilli powder. This was when their dry land would yield maize or jowar. In bad times, when even tamarind was unaffordable, they would soak the rotis in salt water and eat them. As each of her grandsons grew he would be sent off to do “jeetam” or bonded labour with landlords. Beginning with the four-year-old Venkat to 12-year-old Bhoomiah all were “jeetam.” (Interestingly, the urbanization of Balamma was evident in the names she gave her grandsons: while the older ones were Bhoomaiah and Dubbaiah, the younger ones were Venkat, Vijay and Anand).
The kids would graze the cows of the landlord, and when hungry would pick raw “sitaphal” (during winter), roast them in fires and eat their fill. Balamma once returned from her annual visit to her village with a back full of boils. She said she had done “coolie” during the planting season and not being used to the job, the exposure to the sun had burnt her skin. In really bad times when there was a severe drought, the family would migrate to Bombay
Balamma would keep the letter safely and wait for a lean afternoon to walk 10 kms to an acquaintance to get it read. Once she got post card with a black border and when she saw it she was very upset…she told me the black border meant a death. After several hours of desperate hunting for someone who could read those few tragic lines, Balamma came to know that her son-in-law had passed away…
The neighbourhood was highly impressed by Balamma’s loyalty. This led to unforeseen consequences. At the point, we three sisters were having problems with Balamma: as adult or pre-adult individuals we resented Balamma’s domination. She too couldn’t reconcile with our growing independence. Often there would be fireworks in the house and the extent of Balamma’s hurt came to the fore when she announced that she would be leaving us for employment with a family not too far away, and it would be at a higher salary. We were dumb-founded, but Balamma did leave and that too without informing my mother (my father had passed away by then).
The neighbours had found her a job for a higher salary after convincing her that she was being underpaid and exploited by us. She left with her battered tin trunk and bedroll comprising a thin carpet and a pillow.
For the next few months we would run into Balamma on the road, or at the vegetable vendor. She was always on the run. She had to look after two kids and run errands also. She seemed distinctly thinner and when we asked about it, she simply said the food at her new employer’s house was loaded with asafoetida which she found unpalatable. One day we ran into Balamma’s employer who casually informed us that Balamma was seriously ill and was admitted to the nearby government hospital. We rushed to the hospital and found her lying on the floor in a corridor. We three sisters, all under 18, decided that the dirty hospital was not the place for Balamma. We paid the bills, got her discharged and took her to a private doctor, and then home. She came only too willingly; it was her home too. We then sent a telegram to our mother informing her of Balamma’s illness. She took the first train to Hyderabad
Balamma literally became homeless when it was decided I should move into a hostel to complete my post-graduation and our city establishment was closed down after 20-odd years. She was rendered jobless in her old age and as I finished studies and moved out of town for job I lost touch with her. She had returned to her daughter, but occasionally came to visit my mother at her own expense, travelling 150 kms up and down.
She came on one such visit soon after my marriage and demanded to see my ‘thali.’ When I showed it, she turned her nose up…the ‘thali’ revealed the Vaishnavite roots of my in-laws and she, I discovered, was a Shaivaite! She demanded to see my in-laws’ house to gauge for herself their status. She, I am afraid, had her nose in the air and my in-laws did not know what quite hit them: here was a servant who was being treated royally by the daughter-in-law and worse, the old woman was acting high and mighty. But that was Balamma…she was proud, dignified and she cared too much for us to think that anybody else was better than us. But she never voiced her feelings.
Soon, she returned to her village and I did not see her again…a few years later we got the information that she had passed away. I did not shed tears then, but now there is no stopping them for the woman who gave so much. We grabbed it without ever thanking her, or even admitting it to ourselves.
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